Weapons utilizing flechettes as a kill mechanism often have considerable advantages over weapons using fragmenting warheads. The more streamlined flechettes are less susceptible to slowdown than the rather chunky fragments and thus sweep over a much larger lethal area. Furthermore, all flechettes can be directed toward a target whereas with a fragmenting warhead, a high percentage of the fragments are projected harmlessly into the air. It can be shown that for values of range to target of several hundred meters, flechette-type weapons are considerably more effective than fragment-type weapons. For extended target ranges, however, flechette effectiveness deteriorates primarily resulting from too sparse of a flechette pattern. FIG. 1 shows a plot of kill probability (P.sub.K) as a function of range to target in meters. The deterioration in P.sub.K beyond 200 meters is analogous to a shotgun shell which is quite effective close in, but becomes ineffective at higher ranges due to sparsity of the expanding buckshot pattern and slowdown. Fragment round effectiveness is relatively insensitive to increases in range to target since the warhead is first projected into a target area and then chemical energy from the explosive propels the fragments the remaining short distance to the target. Flechettes, on the other hand, have all of their energy imparted to them at the gun and depend on their low drag profile to retain the maximum kinetic energy until target intercept. Although flechette slowdown enroute to the target is tolerable, the expansion of the flechette cloud becomes excessive at the extended ranges resulting in reduced effectiveness.